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April 28, 2005

Justice Scalia's OT 2005 Clerks

Many of you have written Article III Groupie asking her to hurry up and post about the remaining Supreme Court clerks for October Term 2005. A3G deeply appreciates your enthusiastic response to this latest UTR feature, and she understands that the suspense is killing you. But please, cut her some slack. She's working as hard as she can!

Well, tough luck! It's not his fault -- he's the Rock Star of One First Street! And here are the four right-wing headbangers that he has selected for his kick-ass band, "The Originalists." Let's give it up for AS's clerks for the October Term 2005!

1. John C. Demers (Harvard '99/O'Scannlain)

Tidbits:

(a) despite being "absolutely brilliant," with "amazing grades" from Harvard Law -- from which he graduated magna cum laude, natch -- John has "an utterly debilitating weakness for bad teenage comedies and portraits of anthropomorphic dogs";(b) he makes "a mean tiramisu" and speaks fluent Italian (sure to come in handy for sotto voce sidebars with Nino);(c) although not a surfer, he has been known to use the formulation "awse," as a shorthand for "awesome";(d) he is a solid Catholic, like his future boss;(e) he and his wife Cindy, a teacher, are "two of the coolest and most fun people you'll ever meet"; and(f) he will soon be graduating from the Finishing School for the Elect (and before his OLC stint, he was at Boston's white-shoe Ropes & Gray).

(a) after graduating from Duke with a double major in electrical engineering and philosophy (!), John headed off to Oxford, in merry olde England, as a Rhodes Scholar (the undergraduate analogue to the Elect);(b) at Oxford, he earned a second bachelor's degree in theology;(c) "[h]e then began to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, but he decided that academic philosophy was not for him and left after earning a master's degree" (see here);(d) he's a native of St. Louis, Missouri, to which he may return after his stint at One First Street; and(e) he's "hunky" (see pic) and "uber-Catholic" (like his future boss).

(a) after graduating from Duke with a degree in history, Evan headed off to Oxford, in merry olde England, as a Marshall Scholar;(b) at Oxford, he studied British constitutional history;(c) while at Yale Law School, where he was involved in the YLS Christian Fellowship group, "he was a big fan of tea at the Elizabethan Club and Welsh rarebit at Mory's";(d) despite this apparent anglophilia, Mr. Young, who hails from San Antonio, is "an ardent Texan"; and(e) while still in high school, he wrote Lone Star Justice, a biography of Justice Tom C. Clark -- the only Texan ever to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

[Evan Young] published a young-adult book called "Lone Star Justice: A Biography of Tom C. Clark" when he was still in high school. It's a Sweet Valley High for the law jock set. Who cares if it's currently ranked #1,765,409 in Amazon sales? It got a rave review from a fellow Texan (Evan's cousin?). Evan is well on his way to becoming the second "Lone Star Justice." That sound you hear is jealous conservatives eating their hearts out!

Another UTR reader chimes in with this additional anecdote about Evan:

In a large federal jurisdiction class in spring 2003, Evan gave an impassioned monologue about a subject I can no longer remember -- the principles of federalism? the importance of Article III courts? -- that involved some elaborate analogy to flora and fauna. It was a piece of great Southern oratory. In the end, the substance was less memorable than the result: widespread applause, laughter, and hooting, as the instructor, Professor Paul Gewirtz, realized that the eloquent Young had just wrestled control of the class from him!

Evan's ability to hijack a class from a Yale Law School professor -- and not just any prof, but Paul Gewirtz, a member of the Elect and the husband of Zoe Baird (of Nannygate fame) -- may be less surprising than it might at first seem. Consider this comment from a UTR correspondent: "Evan has the kind of voice that I imagined God to have when I was a kid -- deep and authoritative, with a hint of gentleness and good nature."

********************

So there you have it : the four new members of "The Originalists," OT 2005!Backing up lead vocalist Nino Scalia, we have John Demers on bass, Scott Martin on drums, John Sauer on guitar, and Evan Young on keyboard. FANTABULOUS!!!

At least on the surface, this crew appears to be fairly harmonious (and homogeneous?). In contrast toSOC's clerks for next Term, the AS clerks seem to have a lot in common. All four are conservative white males; three hail from the South; two attended Duke for college, before studying at Oxford on prestigious British fellowships; and two are Catholic guys named "John."**

A3G predicts that they will have a very good year. Her special message to "The Originalists": Rock on, boys! And when you find yourselves reading cert petitions at midnight, in desperate need of some late-night lovin', just send A3G a backstage pass. After all, they don't call her "Article III Groupie" for nothin'!

** A3G assumes that these fellows are conservative based on their feeder judge pedigree. But if one of these gents is a raging liberal, please let her know. If all four are conservative, it validates the observation of PrawfsBlawg's Dan Markel that Justice Scalia's purported practice of having one liberal clerk in his chambers "may be a practice more honored in the breach."

I'm not sure if the previous comment was directed at me, but my point about the liberal clerk in AS' chambers (ie., that there often aren't any such clerks, notwithstanding the reputation he has of having one every year) was not a critique, just a description of what typically occurs in his chambers. I think A3G was similarly making a descriptive point, not a normative one.